What Nationality Am I?
Listening to the current (mostly insane) debates over immigration has raised some important questions for me.
Currently there are several proposals floating around attempting to deny citizenship status to children born in the US of non-citizen parentage. Now my parents were not US citizens, they were Canadians at the time I made my grand entry to the world. My mother later became a US citizen.
So, if we pass such legislation will this be retroactive for all living persons? If so then technically I will no longer be a US citizen. Much as I might heartily enjoy being deported to Canada it is unfortunate that at the time of my birth (1963) Canada did not recognise as citizens those persons born outside of Canada even if the parents were Canadian. Effectively I have no absolute legal claim to Canadian citizenship so hypothetically if I were deported to Canada they could freely deport me to....I dunno...where would they deport me to? Makes your head hurt to consider this scenario.
Okay, so it is a bit far-fetched and not overly likely to come up but under the current anti-immigrant ranting and raving going on here I would hesitate to call it impossible. It would amuse me a great deal to know what other persons some of these proposed changes to citizenship laws would affect. I suspect it might fall under the "laws of unintended consequences" that this sort of thing usually generates.
Always be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
4 comments:
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